Brother of the More Famous Jack

by Barbara Trapido

Yet she’s quick to abase herself. After getting dumped by a man who ‘made me a careful articulate pyramid of my shortcomings, which was anything but kind,’ Katherine says, ‘. . . I think that before he turned and walked away from me I said that I was sorry.” Reading that made my stomach knot in recognition of my younger self; I suspect many bright women will feel the same.

Trapido was a mother with no M.F.A. or any literary training. All she had was a head bursting with the music of her characters which she committed to paper for the pure joy of it.

‘It beats me,’ said my Aussie, as we watched the oncoming drizzle, ‘why nobody thought of turning this place into a penal colony and exporting the British populace en masse to Australia.’

He had, upon the marble floor, a sparse collection of stark, punitive wire chairs, chairs that Marinetti might have dreamed up in a futurist vision.

I know all about these clever chaps like yours and mine you see. I know all about their nice impressive commitments to the rights of women and the division of labour, because they’re very good at articulating these things and it costs them nothing to say it all as nicely as they do. If you are going to earn a living, Katherine, and keep up seriously with your orders, you will not do it and mind a small, active child at the same time. Jonathan must mind that babe for you, either every morning, or for four whole working days a week. Not as a favour, mind, but as a necessity. Along with the shopping and the cooking and cleaning and laundry. Just as women do it. Make him earn the right to sit at his typewriter. That’s his indulgence.

In a house full of talkers Roger never talked much. He always disliked the unremarkable small change of conversation. It was persistently a difference between us – I love what people say to each other.